2D Particle? 3D Model? or Recorded Movie?

Unity Engine
1

http://www.hearthcards.net/packs/

Hello everyone, in the link above you will see that im interested on how the game Hearthstone animates the opening and selecting card packs in the game.

Specifically the blue texture on the board when you pick up the card, and the effect that happens when you place the card.

My questions are as follows:

-Are those 2D sprite sheet animations, 3d models, or Movie textures?

-What method would be more efficient?

-Do any assets on the store offer effects or tools that can emulate this?

Thanks in advance for any help offered on this topic.

2

Looks like a flow map.

You could get a similar look using a shader and meshes, it would be pretty efficient too :slight_smile:

Best of luck!

3

@TheDevGuy

You could use a particle system or 2d sprite animations for sure. I personally think a particle system would be fine and should be pretty efficient since it is static and not moving and a bit easier. You could just place the emitters where ever you want. Download Curvy and MagicBox from the asset store, then download the extra pack that allows you to use MagicBox along with Curvy to create bezier type curves. Unity doesn’t currently support this awesomeness. They have particle systems, but it currently isn’t what you would want for this. Curvy/MagicBox have custom curves you can edit the points along a curve to follow and it’s quite efficient, as long as you aren’t transforming anything during runtime.

The only way to know is to do a dummy test with both then Profile it in Unity to see which one is more efficient and which one will take longer. Also depends on what platform you are building it for and your time limitations.

Good luck

4

Thanks for the replies, and sorry for the late response.

Now another question, if i were to use the 2d sprite method or particles, how would i go about making it scale correctly with the screen W/H? Like would the particles be out of place on different resolutions if using particles? or can i anchor 2d sprite uv scroll particle so that it scales correctly?

My intended platforms are desktop, so the resolutions are generally in the same range

5

The 2D toolkit camera does a great job at handling all that scaling for you, without a single line of code. You just add the different resolutions to the override settings.